The model on the right above is an image of the pdb model you can view by clicking here
or you can just click on the image itself.
Either way, be sure to close the new window that opens up with the 3D model in it when you are ready to come back here.

Poly(methyl methacrylate), which lazy scientists call PMMA, is
a clear plastic, used as a shatterproof
replacement for glass. It is just one member of a huge family of
methacrylate esters in which the group attached (R in the figure below)
can be any alkyl group or even aryl group. Both of these kinds can be
further substituted with all kinds of reactive and not-so-reactive groups.
For example, HEMA (below) has an alcohol group attached to the ester unit.
This makes polyHEMA water soluble and allows additional groups to be attached
by converting the alcohol to, say, an ester of something else. Neat!
This is true for the acrylates as well, and this
makes these two families of monomers and their polymers some of the most
widely explored and used of all those available today.

Further uses of PMMA include for the barrier at the ice rink which keeps hockey pucks from flying
in the faces of fans is made of PMMA. The chemical company Rohm and Haas
makes windows out of it and calls it Plexiglas. Ineos Acrylics also makes it and calls it Lucite. Lucite is used to make
the surfaces of hot tubs, sinks, and the ever popular one piece
bathtub and shower units, among other things.

When it comes to making windows, PMMA has another advantage over glass.
PMMA is more transparent than glass. When glass windows are made too
thick, they become difficult to see through. But PMMA windows can be made
as much as 13 inches (33 cm) thick, and they're still perfectly
transparent. This makes PMMA a wonderful material for making large
aquariums, whose windows must be thick in order to contain the high
pressure millions of gallons of water. In fact, the largest single window
in the world, an observation window at California's Monterrey Bay
Aquarium, is made of one big piece of PMMA which is 54 feet long, 18 feet
high, and 13 inches thick (16.6 m long, 5.5 m high, and 33 cm thick).

PMMA is also found in paint. The painting on your right, Acrylic
Elf was painted by Pete Halverson with acrylic paints. Acrylic
"latex" paints often contain PMMA suspended in water. PMMA doesn't
dissolve in water, so dispersing PMMA in water requires we use another
polymer to make water and PMMA compatible with each other. To see how we
do this, go visit the poly(vinyl acetate) page.

But PMMA is more than just plastic and paint. Often lubricating oils and
hydraulic fluids tend to get really viscous and even gummy when they get
really cold. This is a real pain when you're trying to operate heavy
equipment in really cold weather. But when a little bit PMMA is dissolved
in these oils and fluids, they don't get viscous in the cold, and machines
can be operated down to -100 oC (-150 oF), that
is, presuming the rest of the machine can take that kind of cold!

As you can see from the picture below, the structure of methyl methacrylate kind
of looks like
Massachusetts. But Massachusetts doesn't polymerize, because there's
only one. Here's a better, 3-D look at the monomer methyl methacrylate (on the right):

The model on the right above is an image of the pdb model you can view by clicking here
or you can just click on the image itself.
Either way, be sure to close the new window that opens up with the 3D model in it when you are ready to come back here.

PMMA is a member of a family of polymers which chemists call
acrylates,
but the rest of the world calls acrylics.

Another polymer used as an unbreakable glass substitute is polycarbonate. But PMMA is cheaper!